Thursday, April 07, 2016

Earthquake swarm continues, M=2.7 is largest one yet

The earthquake swarm in northwest Arizona continues with two events occurring shortly before 1 a.m. this morning, one at magnitude 2.7 and another two minutes later with magnitude 2.2. The locations are being replotted by Dr.Jeri Young here at AZGS, using data from the Arizona Broadband Seismic Network that we manage. This could result in the epicenters being revised by a number of kilometers based on previous re-calculations. [Right, today's quakes are shown in orange. The blue dot is Wednesday's event. The yellow dots are some of the previous events. Red lines are active faults. Credit, USGS]

The swarm began March 28 and we now have recorded 22 events, ranging in magnitude 0.7 to today's 2.7. This is a remote area and there are no reports of anyone feeling the quakes, let alone any damage. The area sits between the Mesquite and Grand Wash faults, at the eastern edge of the Basin and Range Province which is still stretching east-west, and at southern end of the Intermountain Seismic Belt.

The Arizona seismic network is funded by internal funds generated by the Arizona Geological Survey. We receive no state or federal funds to operate the network or process the data.